Dreams, Myth, History: Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's Dramaturgies

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Notes

For a more elaborate overview of the context in which Myth (2007) was created and its distinct relationship to Cherkaoui's previous work Foi (2003), see Lou Cope, ‘Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui: Myth (2007) - Mapping the Multiple’, in Making Contemporary Theatre: International Rehearsal Processes, ed. by Jen Harvie and Andy Lavender (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010), pp. 39–58.

Ensemble Micrologus specialize in the performance of vocal and instrumental medieval music of the Mediterranean region. After Myth (2007), their collaboration with Cherkaoui continued with Babel (2010).

Reehorst, a former dancer with Wim Vandekeybus's Ultima Vez, co-choreographed Ook (2002) with Cherkaoui for Theater Stap, a theatre company working with mentally disabled actors. She has been working closely with Cherkaoui as a choreographic assistant on a number of works, including Myth (2007) and Babel (2010).

Marianne Van Kerkhoven, ‘Looking Without Pencil in the Hand’, Theaterschrift, 5–6 (1994), 140–48.

Cathy Turner and Synne K. Behrndt, Dramaturgy and Performance (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), p. 17.

Turner and Behrndt, Dramaturgy, p. 18.

Maaike Bleeker, ‘Dramaturgy as a Mode of Looking’, Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, 13:2 (2003), 163–72.

Janelle C. Reinelt and Joseph R. Roach, ‘Psychoanalysis’, in Critical Theory and Performance, ed. by Janelle C. Reinelt and Joseph R. Roach (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), pp. 395–402 (p. 398).

Sara Wolf, ‘Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's “Myth”: The Choreographer, a Rising Star in Europe, Presents a US Premiere at UCLA’, Los Angeles Times, 20 October 2008, http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/europe/la-et-myth20-2008oct20,0,885490.story. [accessed 22 October 2008] (para. 1 of 13).

Carl Gustav Jung, Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1928-1930, ed. by William McGuire (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), p. 53.

Van de Cappelle studied Art and Graphic design in Bruges and Antwerp and has worked as a set designer with Cherkaoui since 2003, for Tempus Fugit (2004), Loin (2005), End (2006) and Myth (2007).

During the international tour of Myth (2007), English and French translations were used instead.

Anthony Stevens, Jung (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 45.

We later hear the protagonist character played by Christine Leboutte admit that she has attempted suicide, but failed.

Jung, Dream Analysis, p. 241.

Ibid., p. 13.

Carl Gustav Jung, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, trans. by R. F. C. Hull (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960), p. 266.

Cope, ‘Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’, pp. 39–58.

Ibid., p. 94.

Harold G. Coward, Jung and Eastern Thought (Albany: SUNY Press, 1985), p. 51.

Stevens, Jung, p. 87.

Jean-François Lyotard, ‘The Unconscious as Mise-en-Scène’, in Mimesis, Masochism, & Mime: The Politics of Theatricality in Contemporary French Thought, ed. by Tim Murray (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997), pp. 163–74.

Stevens, Jung, p. 87.

Raphael Samuel and Paul Thompson, The Myths We Live By (London: Routledge, 1990).

Joseph Mali, Mythistory: The Making of a Modern Historiography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003).

Especially Apocrifu (2007) can be read as a critique of the written word, as a multitude of books are trodden on and violently thrown across the stage.

Carl Gustav Jung, The Symbolic Life: Miscellaneous Writings, trans. by R. F. C. Hull (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977), p. 280.

In Foi (2003), Cherkaoui addressed the same issue in a scene where a group of performers stand behind Wagemans and take their turn grabbing his arms and speaking through him about their own insecurities.

Satoshi Kudo, original Japanese text cited in Myth, translated by Kudo in an interview with the author, Antwerp, May 2009.

Lyotard, ‘Unconscious as Mise-en-Scène’, p. 167.

Samuel and Thompson, Myths We Live By, p. 2.

Jeffrey C. Alexander, Ron Eyerman, Bernhard Giesen, Neil J. Smelser, and Piotr Sztompka, Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), p. 4.

Sara Savage and Jose Liht, ‘Radical Religious Speech: The Ingredients of a Binary World View’, in Extreme Speech and Democracy, ed. by Ivan Hare and James Weinstein (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 488–507 (p. 490). As an example of this notion of Islamic trauma, Savage and Liht have discerned a ‘three-part, mobilizing narrative’ in radical Islamic discourse: Islam was once the uncontested ruler of the Middle East; then the West intervened and Islam was compromised, while Muslims across the world are oppressed; now action must be taken to reinstate a perfect, pure Islamic society. It is argued that this narrative, based upon a notion of collective Islamic trauma, and other rhetorical strategies produce a binary world view, in which the West is misrepresented and vilified. However, though perhaps beyond the scope of Savage and Liht's text, similar populist discourse can be found in radical right European politics and American justifications of the War on Terror.

Hans-Thies Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, trans. by Karen Jürs-Munby (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2006), p. 147.

Based on medieval manuscript (circa 1390) Panciatichiano 26, available in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence, Italy.

Jung, Dream Analysis, pp. 579–80.

Janet Sonenberg, Dreamwork for Actors (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 31.